Trump White House rebrands Covid website to attack Wuhan 'lab leak' and Dr Fauci

Back in May 2021, then former US president Donald Trump said he had “very little doubt” that the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. Now, amid his second presidential term, Trump has had the White House webpage on Covid revamped to claim a “lab leak” is part of “the true origins of Covid-19”.

In yet another attack on Dr Anthony Fauci – the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president’s chief medical adviser between 2021 and 2022 – the Trump administration alleges the doctor prompted a study on “the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” in order to “push the preferred notion that COVID-19 originated naturally”.

That study, carried out by American, British and Australian researchers in 2020 and published in Nature Medicine, concluded that “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus” – going against a theory that the virus was borne from ‘gain-of-function’ research, which involves modifying an organism such as a virus to give it new functions.

The American Society for Microbiology says it can help “advance scientific discovery, understand the natural processes that are occurring, and develop solutions to medical conditions or other problems in the living world around us”.

The Covid.gov webpage also claims coronavirus has a “biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that Wuhan is “home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels”.

On protective measures against Covid, it says social distancing “was arbitrary and not based on science” and that there was “no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19”.

A systematic review published in 2023 concluded that most of the studies it examined “suggested that combinations of SDMs [social distancing measures] successfully slowed or even stopped SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the community”.

As for masks, one of the findings of a 2024 study – drawing upon evidence from “over 100 published reviews and selected primary studies” – was that “masks are, if correctly and consistently worn, effective in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases”.

Rather unsurprisingly, Trump’s White House also takes aim at the World Health Organization the president recently pulled the US out of – claiming it “placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties” – and accuses the Biden administration of “outright censorship” by “coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent”.

Crikey.

After the website went live, the White House Twitter/X account sought to direct people to it with a bit of reverse psychology by tweeting “definitely don’t visit covid.gov” and adding an emoji of a face stifling laughter.

The account has since been branded “f***ing insufferable”:

Another accused the White House of ‘deflecting’ from “depriving legal immigrants of due process”:

A third likened the tweet to “an e-girl who just dropped her OnlyFans”:

And one account said the revamp was “insane”:

This is not the only time the White House has come under fire for its social media activity this week, either, as it was branded “childish” for critiquing a New York Times headline about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported by US officials to El Salvador.

The Trump administration insists he is “never coming back” to America, despite an order from the Supreme Court to “facilitate” his return.

Why not read…

• White House slammed for ‘childish’ post about El Salvador deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia
• Trump and Musk poll shows how popular they are - and they should be worried

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